Blemish
by VeryBerry Rebecca
Summary: Part of the Seven Vices Series: Vanity. It's Halo night, but where's Penny? When Penny's vanity comes into question, the only person who can help her is the last person she wants discovering her secret.
1. Blemish Part One

The Seven Vices Series: Vanity

Blemish

Darkness for a moment, as it had been for many hours, even before the wintry sunlight diminished from behind her drawn curtains.

Smooth enveloping darkness, anonymous. Tucked into a corner of the couch she disguised herself amid the rest of the shadows. Grown tired of the rom-com movie marathon she had engaged herself with most of the day the woman had flicked off the TV a while ago and was now sitting quietly in the anonymous dark, until…

Light.

Sudden and bright clinical light piercing her rigidly preserved darkness.

Penny turned quickly but was immediately dazzled by the near-blinding light, and when her sight finally recovered enough all she could make out was a lengthy dark form almost the height of the doorframe from which the disturbance came; a charcoal blotch between her artificial night and the harsh white hallway light issuing from round the silhouette's edges.

Penny squinted but the power of the light made her eyes water and close tight several times. She held her hand out to protect her eyesight and already the shape became a little clearer, but not enough to distinguish any details from the shadow.

"My, it's dark in here," the shape said in Sheldon's voice. Penny could not make out the shapes of his face or the detail of his clothes, but she did see a dark form in the figure of an arm reaching for the light switch.

At once Penny bolted from the sofa to the door in one lightening speed motion and caught his arm before he reached the switch.

"Don't!" she hissed. "No lights!"

She was close enough to see his face now, sharp and quizzical. Realising this, she released his arm and held her hand between them both to shield her own face, knowing he could see her better than she could see him.

"No lights? The fuse blown has again? I've told you time after time not to have so many appliances running simultaneously, you don't need to use the hairdryer and watch TV at the same time," he lectured.

Penny thought about all the gadgets and computers and other crap running in his apartment all hours of the day, but arguing with him would delay him leaving. "Sheldon just go, ok?"

But go he did not. He simply looked back at her as if he didn't understand her command.

She growled angrily, balled her fists and pushed against his shoulders. "Go! You understand go, don't you?"

"To leave, depart, to move from one location to another, into, towards or away from," Sheldon recited in a level tone, as though Penny wasn't pounding against his chest. "I'm familiar with the term, yes. I just don't see why you are instructing me to do so."

"Because want you to go! I don't want to be in the light and you're… you're letting all the dark out!"

Penny struggled against him but Sheldon was surprisingly sturdy.

"Perhaps you are having money trouble again?" he continued in the same almost blissfully ignorant manner. Was he ignoring her on purpose, or was he really _that bad _at understanding social principles? "You certainly seem to be finding new ways to reduce you outgoing payments. No lights, no candles this time either." He cast a critical gaze around the shadowy room. "Looking at the levels of dust on your shelving units I see you have even saved on polish for the last week. Thrifty."

Penny hit against his shoulders on every other word, "This has … nothing to do with … me being …. poor!"

In a last effort Penny threw all her weight against him to no effect, and when he didn't yield she snarled again, then she flew across the room and landed in a heated flurry back on her couch.

She swung her legs underneath her and folded her arms. "What d'you want?" she said sulkily, not daring to look up at him. "And shut the door!"

Sheldon delicately stepped into her dust drenched air and did as he was asked, keeping one hand wrapped around the handle.

"You are aware that tonight is Halo night?" said Sheldon wheeling back round.

"Yeah."

"Then clearly you are the only one who is," he sighed with disdain. "Raj seems to have confused Halo Night with 'Anything Goes Friday' and has brought with him, for their delectation and my disgust, 'Ghostbusters', insisting we play immediately as it is on loan."

"Can't you just play Halo on Anything Goes Friday?"

Sheldon gave her a piteous look. "Please, as if there's an 'Anything Goes Friday'. The only thing close to that is the Breakfast Bonanza morning every third week of the month when Howard makes us all breakfast, because Lord knows what he makes French toast with. At his hands any meal becomes 'anything goes'."

Penny overcame her irritation with a deep replenishing breath, like Leonard says he does when Sheldon's behaviour gets the better of him. "And what does that have to do with me?"

"Well, your French toast leaves something to be desired, too…"

"No, I meant _why _are you here bugging me and not over there playing Ghostbusters and leaving me alone!"

"Ah," he said with a wagging finger in the air, pleased they were coming to the reason behind his visit. "I am here because when Raj went beyond all sound reason and produced this low-quality game on this Halo night, I was the one who complained the most, so they made me come over here to fetch you."

Although the light was gone Penny kept her face turned away from her unwelcome guest in the hope he wouldn't notice. "Well I don't want to be fetched. I just would like to stay at mine tonight and … and read a good book."

Sheldon, still hovering by the door, lifted onto his toes to see onto the darkened coffee table. "But you don't have a book there," he observed innocently.

"Alright, enough with the third degree!" Penny barked, needlessly defensive, so aggressive that Sheldon took a step back in surprise. "So you can just leave now, bye-bye then."

Predictably though, Sheldon didn't leave. In fact he barely moved at all, but remained lingering strangely close to the door with a hand around the handle. She hadn't expected him to leave; as soon as Sheldon said he'd been sent to get her Penny knew immediately that to him it seemed he had been set a task – and Sheldon never gave up a challenge.

"I'm not sure Leonard will accept failure in retrieving you. Penny, I insist you come with me back to my apartment."

A smile tugged the corners of her mouth at the absurdity of Sheldon asking her back to his apartment, until she remembered why wasn't going. "Seriously, Sheldon, no; no one can see me like this."

"Like what?" Sheldon took half a pace closer. She could sense him peering enquiringly at her as she continued to hide her face. "As unnecessarily dark as this room is, I don't see any abnormalities in your appearance. Granted your hair is in a particularly more dishevelled pony-tail than usual today, and while there is some sort of liquid matter on the lower abdomen of your top, you don't appear any less shambolic than usual."

Wondering how Sheldon could possibly have seen the stain in this gloom, Penny licked her thumb and rubbed vigorously at where she supposed the stain to be. "Thanks for the physical assessment," she said trying to keep the tremor of annoyance at bay, "but my hair isn't the reason I'm not leaving this apartment or turning on the lights, and neither is it me being poor."

Sheldon shifted his weight from one impatient foot onto the other and looked down at her across the dark space between them. "As a gamer I'm usually not averse to sitting in a darkened room all evening, but I have a delicious Thai dinner waiting for me in the other room which I would like to eat before it cools enough to reach the dangerous temperature between piping hot and warm that hazardous bacteria thrive in, so would you please either follow me, or tell me what your problem is."

She didn't like the attitude of his voice, the snappy and irate tone he usually reserved for patronising her with facts she didn't need or want to know, and she bristled with a hundred insults poised on her tongue to spit at him. However, Sheldon was highly unlikely to leave her in peace until she gave in.

Penny pulled a lengthy part of her hair that had long since outgrown its original purpose as a fringe from her scruffy ponytail and twirled it around her fingers, contemplating her decision. She had half hoped her dawdling answer would exasperate Sheldon and he would leave, but he remained as still as his patient expression, so finally Penny arranged that lock of hair to hang deliberately over her face and agreed to the lesser of two evils.

"Fine," she conceded sulkily, "I'll tell you. But only on the condition that you leave me alone afterwards."

Sheldon agreed and was about to join her on the couch but Penny stopped him.

"You promise you're going to leave after, right?"

"Penny I would like nothing but to leave right now and eat my red Thai prawns, but we both know that that is an improbability," Sheldon replied, widening his eyes to show his sincerity.

He was resigned to his duty. So Penny lowered her eyes, and nodded for him to come closer.

Like a bullet Sheldon unclamped his hand from the door and shot across to the space on the couch beside her, sitting in his rigid fashion. His speediness was the most activity the apartment had seen all day, and then the most amount of light as Sheldon quickly (and disappointingly) found the box of matches on her coffee table, and in one deft sweep, stuck a match and touched it to a candle. As the match head sparked and sizzled on the wick everything within a five-yard radius suddenly burst into a palette of honey light and blue shadow that danced and jerked with every wavering flicker of the tiny flame.

Penny drew a lengthy breath but as she started to speak, Sheldon interrupted with a single upright finger. Very deliberately Sheldon tucked his hands under his thighs and lifted himself barely two inches from the couch seat. Then, with all the seriousness he would employ to calculate a significant equation, he proceeded to bounce up and down on the cushion few times with a quizzical but determined look to test his comfort.

So busy was he springing up and down like a coil he didn't see the woman beside him hide something deliberately from him by arranging a section of her purposely over her face.

After a final bounce Sheldon fidgeted from side to side, adjusting his positioning, until he looked satisfied.

Finally he threw her a nod. "Proceed."

"Before I explain, let me start by saying you also have to promise not to overreact," she warned him. "I'm really upset about this and if you make some big thing over it, I'll never talk to you again."

A hint of a smirk dusted his otherwise impassive face. "While the forfeit of this arrangement is _tempting_," he said, his contemplation provoking the intended scowl from Penny, "I then must point out that I am an experienced scientist who has seen, heard and contemplated far more thrilling and terrible things than whatever hideous secret you are about to impart."

He had a point. Of all the people she knew – from her girlfriends back home to her work friends, and of the boys duelling pixelated ghouls on the XBox next door – surely Sheldon Cooper would be the least… well, the most sympathetic?

Not that he looked very sympathetic right now. In the flourishing bluey-darkness Sheldon looked sterner and more alien than ever. But she had no one else to tell, and she had to tell someone.

"Alright then," she agreed, making sure Sheldon understood the conditions of their agreement, which the look he returned her seemed to confirm.

With nervous trepidation and butterflies spiralling in her stomach, Penny closed her eyes with a heavy sigh, pivoted ninety-degrees in her seat, and with the lightning speed of someone ripping away a Band-Aid, Penny whipped back the protective curl of her hair to reveal to Sheldon her big secret.

***


	2. Blemish Part Two

The Seven Vices Series: Vanity

Blemish

Part 2

Turned away from him Penny couldn't see his reaction, but she didn't need to. For one dizzying, stomach-dropping moment he said absolutely nothing, and nor did she, and the only sound she knew was the pounding of her heart in her chest, until Sheldon broke the tension with disgust.

"Oh good lord, it's _hideous_!"

Penny shrieked and clasped her bare cheek to hide her beauty-scarring zit. "Sheldon, how could you? You promised…"

"Bazinga."

Penny's stumbling words dwindled away like a candle sputtering out of life. Penny turned to look at Sheldon returning a proud, wire-thin grin back at her. "It was a joke. Applied to lessen your emotional tension," he explained with exaggerated phonetics to make his intension clearer. Sheldon shook his head, smiling to himself that jack-o-lantern grin. "I'm afraid you have fallen victim to another of my classic pranks."

"That's not funny," Penny growled, still cupping her cheek protectively. "I'm seriously upset over this."

"Over what? I really don't know what you expect me to see."

"This!" Penny cried pointing grandly at a faint pinkish mark on her even-toned skin. "This right here! That huge, huge zit I can't get rid of!"

The candle fluttered in the gust of Penny's overzealous gestures. In the breeze the dozy candlelight suddenly shivered across Sheldon's face and deepened the creases of his perplexion. After a moment, he said slowly, "You, a fully grown and independent woman, are this concerned about your appearance that you have isolated yourself from your friends and quarantined yourself in your apartment… over a mere blemish?"

Now that someone else had sounded her problem out loud, it did seem a little feeble. "But I have my first audition in months tomorrow," she said weakly, hoping she sounded more convincing than she now felt. "It's for some make-up/beauty product, and it's a national commercial. If I get it, it could lead to more work! I can't go in looking like this."

Now Sheldon looked even more doubtful than before. His hawk-like eye hovered on her cheek for a closer examination for a moment, then moved to the coffee table and fixed on an almost empty plate, picking out scraps of salad leaves left on the surface.

He eyed them suspiciously. "For a long time now, Penny, you and I have performed the socially-bonding ritual of eating together as part of a wider circle comprising of Howard, Rajesh and Leonard, and while I can say that I've never really taken much notice of your eating habits before, I can also state with the same confidence that I have not once ever seen you eat - a salad - before."

Penny laboriously pulled herself up from the couch and took the plate to her kitchen sink. "I know, I know. I don't know what my grandma would do if she saw me eating this stuff, she's a big believer in steak and mashed potatoes over this rabbit food," she said over the scrape of her fork clearing the remains into the drain. "But I had no choice really. I've been detoxing myself all day!"

The clatter of the ceramic dropping into the basin drowned Sheldon's patronising scoff at the word 'detoxing'.

Penny scrabbled for a clean glass and pushed it under the tap. "I've been trying to get rid of this thing since last night," she said over noise of the filling glass. "I've had my head over a steaming bowl, been drinking this stuff," she held the half full glass of water aloft for Sheldon to see. "No juice at all! I even tried a sample of the product I'm auditioning for that the agency sent over. Ha, that was a bust. And most importantly I've had no added salt or sugar to anything, and y'know, if I went over to yours tonight for take-out and just sat and watched you eat I'd be tempted, so staying here and keeping to myself was for my own good." Penny swung the tap to the 'off' position and drank the bland, flavourless water from the tumbler.

Sheldon meanwhile plucked the candle from the coffee table, and to keep it from going out, cupped the flame and delicately followed her into the kitchen. "The association between sodium carbonates and your current predicament are only tenuous," Sheldon said evenly as he set the candle on the breakfast bar. "While the cause is not wholly certified, studies suggest it is linked rather to oily skin or stress."

Penny slid her fingers down her cheek. Her skin felt warm, but definitely not oily.

She frowned. "So I'm stressed?" Penny moved past him into the living space and looked around facetiously. "I don't see any smashed plates round here, and that usually happens when I'm stressed. So I guess I'm fine. Thanks."

"Is it possible you have been so fixedly concerned over getting this role your stress levels have increased and the result is now physically evident?"

What Sheldon said made Penny stop in her tracks. God, he was right. Thinking about it, she had been so worked up over landing this part she had actually lost sleep, and that was one of the five symptoms of stress. Like that article in Cosmo last week said, anyway.

Penny wheeled around. "You're right Sheldon," she breathed. "You're so right. I've been so caught up on this whole audition thing and wanting to look my best. And all this time I've been making it worse?" As she said this she felt like a weight was lifting from her shoulders. And then she looked at Sheldon, half visible in the steady candlelight, and suddenly the heavy weight sunk down on her again. "But I still can't go out in public like this."

"Penny, I can barely see it. Without the aid of the Hubble telescope I doubt I should ever see it," said Sheldon like a verbal tut. "Are you so vain as to exclude yourself from us all day because of a meagre flaw?"

Biting her lip and standing in awkward silence told him more than she cared to confess.

"Penny…" Sheldon began, but the woman cut over him.

"Look, just listen to me," Penny snapped, and Sheldon fell back into a respectful silence. "I know it sounds stupid and really vain but… I like having the people next door thinking I'm pretty," she confessed. "When I'm in a really crappy mood from work or whatever, I go over to yours' and Leonard's, and those guys always make a fuss over me, and I always feel better after."

"I don't think they're making a fuss over you simply because you're hot..."

"Uh, Wolowitz?" Penny contended with a dire look.

"Alright," Sheldon conceded. "As the other three are not here I can only speak for myself, but I can assure you I have never cared for your physical appearance."

But Penny didn't have the reaction he had anticipated. Sheldon knew he wasn't great at reading physical cues, but Penny seemed to adopt a steely look, one that prompted a tiny voice in his mind which hardly ever spoke to whisper, _'you may have miscalculated something'_.

"You don't 'care for my appearance'?" she repeated with a voice as cold as an Arctic storm. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I think you may have taken that the wrong way…"

"Really?" Penny swooped over to him and pushed her angered face into his making, Sheldon shrink back into her refrigerator door. "What possibly gave you a clue that I took that _the wrong way_?"

"You're shouting seems to confirm it," Sheldon said, bending his head trying to avoid her persistent confrontation, and still edging backwards.

"What's wrong with my appearance then?"

"Nothing…"

"Is it my 'dishevelled' hair?"

"No…"

"Am I not tall enough? Not pretty enough? Not good enough?"

"Penny, I think you're a perfectly attractive woman!" Sheldon shouted at a level to match Penny's sound and fury.

He closed his eyes and braced himself for the impact of Penny's scorn, but it never came. Gingerly Sheldon opened one eye, then the other, revealing Penny struck still in the warm candlelight. At first he thought she wasn't moving, but looking closer he realised she was just steady, simmering with anger, and her eyes were flicking between his, assessing him.

"You… what?"

He could see her fury subsiding, melting like the wax sliding down the milky candle on the counter behind her.

"I said that you are an attractive person," repeated Sheldon. "I have said it several times before, you had no reason to doubt that fact."

Penny appeared much calmer, the flushed pink hue of her cheeks was returning to normal, though she was still eyeing him with suspicion. "What are you saying?" she asked him.

"That your appearance has never mattered to me because you are my friend, Penny," said Sheldon, feeling braver now, and even taking a bold step towards her. "All of those people over there also share my sentiment."

Penny looked so gentle now, timid in her own uncertainty. She looked down at her hands, watching the candle light dancing gently over her skin. "But, guys don't like…"

Sheldon shook his clever head in disbelief. "Since when have any of the four of us ever borne _any _resemblance to the 'normal' people you usually associate with?"

"But it's gross," she insisted, and then looked up at him from under her eyelashes meekly. Sheldon was still unmoved. "You really don't care?" she asked.

This time Sheldon did tut. "No, of course not," he said, in a tone so unusually reassuring that Penny was taken aback, and didn't even notice that Sheldon had found her hand and was clutching it earnestly in his. "How you look isn't important. Not to me."

The warm sincerity in his voice glowed like fire. As Penny lifted her head up to meet his face she thought how lucky it was that a candle stood flickering beside them distorting the colours in the room as she was sure she was blushing. She smiled shyly, and the curve of her smile disguised her blemish.

"Aww, sweetie," Penny managed to say with a huge bashful grin, and she leant towards him with the intension of pecking his cheek.

But before she got any closer to him Sheldon saw what was coming, and in an animated flash dropped her hand immediately and jolted away as if she had suddenly given him an electric shock.

He touched his fingers to his cheek protectively for a second, and then extended his arm to her. "I believe a socio-symbolic handshake is more appropriate at this junction."

With a grin Penny accepted his offer and they both shook hands firmly. "So why is this symbolic?" she asked as she pulled her hand back.

The moment they let go, Sheldon picked up the candle again and, in the same delicate manor as before, he re-traced his steps to the door, leaving Penny in the semi-darkness of the kitchen. "Because in the western world, a handshake is initiated between two persons to represent a truce, a greeting or a farewell, or a friendship. In this case however, our handshake signifies my success in convincing you to join us for Ghostbusters-nee- Halo night."

"Wait a moment," Penny scurried after him before he reached the door with her only candle. "I didn't say I agreed to go over there."

"But… we shook hands," Sheldon whined, but as Penny squeezed past his body to come between him and the door he had half opened, he felt that his evening was about to be altered further beyond his control by the dictation of others around him.

"Oh," she smiled a misleadingly sweet smile, closing the door firmly with one hand pressed to it. "I think I have a better idea…"

***

Across the hall meanwhile, Howard was kneeling in front of the TV screen with a determined glint in his eye in the face utter destruction. With furious passion his digits mashed the keys on his controller to the sound of Raj, perched on the coffee table behind him, shrieking unhelpful encouragements.

"Go on! Go on! It's right there, on the left – LEFT! Yes there! Ye- NO!" Raj threw his arms up in indignation as Howard lowered his head heavily.

"Dude why didn't you listen to me?" Raj shrieked at a pitch known to bats and dogs as the lights of a fiery explosion from the screen flashed across his face. "I said it was right there!"

"Gee I don't know why, your instructions were so clear," Howard said darkly.

Like his two friends, Leonard also had his eyes fixed on the screen as they played, but he seemed to be looking straight through it and settling on something else, and every now and then he would glance down at his wrist then back to the blaring screen like a compulsive twitch. Eventually Leonard distracted fidgeting attracted Howard's attention.

"If you were that bothered why didn't you go and get her?" said Howard through gritted teeth as he started another game, throwing a bitter look at Raj as he hit 'play now'.

Leonard fidgeted indignantly in his seat and forced down the wrist that had sprung independently into his eye line. "It _is_ weird for her to be so quiet, and Sheldon has been over there a while," he mused, thinking that Sheldon had in fact been away for sixteen minutes, but didn't dare say, in case his friends thought he was obsessed with Penny and who she hangs out with. Of _course_ he didn't care who she hung out with. She was her own person and he didn't have to check up on her to see how she was every minute of the day.

Seventeen minutes…

"I'm just going to see what's keeping them," Leonard found himself saying as he shot to his feet, working of their own accord and marching him across the room. But no sooner had he reached half way to the door it flew open and from it Sheldon emerged at a frightening speed.

"Dude, what've you been doing over there? Leonard's been whining like a little girl."

"Hey Sheldon, where is she?" said Leonard bending over the back of the couch to peer into the hallway optimistically.

"Sheldon get out the way, I'm not allowed to cross the beams!" Howard snapped impatiently.

Sheldon threw a disdainful glance at the game which was most certainly not Halo and side-stepped from the TV screen with resigned obedience to the other side of the coffee table.

"Penny is still her apartment," Sheldon informed them, then doubled over the coffee table and began scrabbling together the collection of half-full take-out cartons strewn across its surface, choosing to overlook Raj's query.

"What are you doing, what's he doing?" Howard said unable to turn and look for himself as his takeout carton disappeared from the floor beside him. "Hey, I wasn't done with that!"

"Yeah, what are you doing?" asked Raj as he watched Sheldon stack trays and cartons one on top of the other in his arms.

Sheldon shot a look over his shoulder at Raj a little coldly. "Since you have set the precedent for translating 'Halo Night' as 'Ghostbusters the Game Night' and breaking a happy routine of two-years, I figured why shouldn't I do likewise?"

"By taking away our food?"

Sheldon finished stacking the food into the most efficient order for travelling and straightened up to address the astonished occupants of the room. Even Howard had paused the game to witness Sheldon completely forego his own rigorously observed agenda first hand.

"As Penny steadfastly refused to leave her apartment for classified reasons we've negotiated a compromise whereby we bring _Hal _- sorry, _Ghostbusters_ Night to her," he announced firmly. "So if you'd care to follow me?"

"Hold on, you can't just take our food to hers," Leonard said.

"Oh. Right." Sheldon paused, then dipped down to scoop the bag containing the sauces, before continuing his path to the door with the bag swinging merrily in his other hand. "Thank you for reminding me, though you could have brought it over yourself."

"No, I mean what if we want to eat here?" Leonard protested. "What's wrong with Penny?"

Raj and Howard exchanged the same silent curious look. Sheldon wheeled round in the door frame to face Leonard, still hovering at the back of the couch.

"That's classified, Leonard," said Sheldon resolutely. He dropped the take-out tower onto the sideboard and took his own carton from the top of the stack. "But fine. If you wish to stay here all night then that is your choice, but if you'd like to be a friend to Penny and want to know why she refuses to leave the house then you know where to find us." Sheldon took half a step into the hallway, then thoughtfully turned back to them. "And bring some emergency candles with you, it's pretty dark over there. They're under the sink in the sealed box marked 'Emergency Scenario 24'."

As Sheldon closed the door behind them and the sound of his footsteps disappearing into Penny's apartment died away, it was a few moments before any of them brought themselves from their collective silent shock.

"Wow," said Leonard finally and smiled across to the other two with bemusement.

"I know," Raj said, "what was that all about?"

"I think, _I think_," said Howard turning in the spot to face them properly, "that we just refused a candlelit dinner at Penny's?"

"Huh," said Leonard, squinting into the air above him thoughtfully for a second. "That doesn't sound like us, does it?"

As one, all three men suddenly leapt into action. Howard jumped from the floor and scurried into the kitchen and pulled Box 24 from under the sink, while Raj sprung forward to switch the game off. Leonard dashed to the door and plucked the remaining trays from the sideboard and followed Howard and Raj as the bundled out the door over to Penny's.

From there the boys set about lighting candles around her apartment and listened as Penny told them of her feeble story, and they lavished sympathy and encouragement on her in equal measure.

And later they persuaded out her apartment over to theirs so they could teach her how to blow-up the marshmallow man while Sheldon watched on, saying very little, but permitting himself a small triumphant smile.

And much, much later, after everyone had left and Penny drew her sleeping mask over her eyes, she drifted into a happy and undisturbed sleep for the first time in three days, thinking about her true friends and how happy they made her. And as she slipped further and further into the depths of slumber, she thought of one friend in particular, who liked her for her.


End file.
